Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, renowned for founding India’s steel and educational institutions, also quietly sparked the revival of Karnataka’s silk industry through a forgotten initiative - the Tata Silk Farm in Bengaluru. Seeing sericulture’s potential to provide rural employment and export opportunities, he modeled the farm on scientific Japanese methods, inviting Japanese experts to train Indians in sericulture practices like mulberry cultivation, silkworm rearing, and silk reeling .

Established around 1902–1903 on rent-free land granted by the Maharaja of Mysore, and supported with an annual subsidy, the farm operated as a not-for-profit training centre. It prioritized indigenous Polyvoltine Mysore silkworms, introduced a low-cost cottage reeling machine, and produced silk deemed world-class by European experts (Citizen Matters, City Idols Blog). Many of India’s first sericulture experts - including Appadhorai Mudaliar and Lakshman Rao - were trained at this facility .

Though the farm was eventually dismantled and absorbed into Bengaluru’s urban growth, its legacy lives on: it inspired the formation of sericulture institutions like the Central Silk Board (1949) and helped lay the groundwork for Karnataka’s globally renowned Mysore silk sector.